Next month, the edtech start-up, that teaches coding to kids online, is launching operations in five new markets - the UK, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore.
The acquisitions were made in areas which are closely related to Reliance's key businesses - telecom, internet, retail, digital, media, education, digital, chemicals and energy.
Its trajectory in telecom is well known but now it is pushing for a similar leap into the ranks of the top players in its other businesses: media and entertainment, e-commerce, a series of online businesses ranging from health to education, and retail.
The scrutiny started when it came to the government's notice that Shelf Drilling, a company that operates one third of ONGC's contracted jackup rig and earns a revenue of close to $220,000 a day, has China Merchant Group as its single largest shareholder.
Star earned ad revenues of around Rs 30 billion during last year's IPL. Whether it hits last year's figure will depend on how the economy picks up during the festival season.
While smart boys like the Ruias of Essar, Ajay Piramal, Max India promoter Analjit Singh laughed all the way to the bank, the Tatas, Anil Ambani, Malaysian tycoon T Ananda Krishna of Maxis (which invested in Aircel), Sistema, and Norway's Telenor burnt their fingers, notes Surajeet Das Gupta.
It has invested $2 billion and spent $200 million on its R&D centre in Bengaluru, the largest such centre outside China where some core technologies are under development.
Besides the pandemic that resulted in higher interest rates, the default by Future Retail has dealt a blow to investor sentiment.
Before the pandemic hit the world and led to shutdowns, the company had received nearly half a dozen offers. But bidders are now withdrawing. They want to reassess the situation. They want to conserve cash and avoid acquisition.
Several airlines, hotels, travel and tourism companies are expected to move their applications for one-time restructuring as soon as the moratorium ends.
Two of Apple Inc's global vendors -- Wistron and Foxconn (through Han Hoi), which already manufacture Apple phones in India -- and a third entity, Pegatron, which will be setting up a new plant, have applied to the government to be eligible under the PLI scheme for large-scale electronics manufacturers.
There is immense pressure on Biyani to go ahead with the RIL offer after FRL defaulted on its interest payments of Rs 100 crore on July 22.
Under these rules, telecom gear makers have to share their source codes and get their equipment tested by third-party labs accredited to the government.
India's telecom sector has been through dizzying peaks, troughs, policy U-turns, court battles, brutal competition, and daily controversies. India could go back to a private sector duopoly with just Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel surviving the mayhem. The third player, Vodafone Idea, could be history.
Companies say that unlike in the US and other countries, in India the high cost of rentals and lower ticket price makes it unviable to run an operation without half the seats available for sale.
Reliance Industries, which sold stake worth $21.7 billion in Jio Platforms, kept the league tables moving in spite of the pandemic.
Chingari, Roposo, Khabri and Trell are seeing huge traction as people are looking at options to earn incentives from home. Music streaming app Gaana, which is strongly placed in the market with 150 million users, recently opened up its short video platform for subscribers.
'These are the people that have worked for you. These are the people who have served you all their careers. You send them out to live in the rain. Is that your definition of ethics when you treat your labour force that way?' the titan asks.
Reliance is leveraging the technological change of building a virtualised 5G network which would see the current hardware-dependent networks shift to software-centric platforms.
Apart from digital advertising revenue, both companies want to reach out to the 'next billion' Indian customers. After all, around half of the 1.3 billion population is still not on the net and this represents a challenge as well as an opportunity.
